What Would Grace Paley Do?

Published February 26th, 2008

Last Thursday night I headed down Berwyn Avenue for a commerative reading of Grace Paley’s work at Women and Children First Bookstore.  The event was organized by Sandi Wisenberg, and I looked forward to seeing Rosellen Brown (a former teacher at SAIC), as well as Peggy Shinner, Sharon Solwicz, and others. The frigid air seeped under my fleece scarf as I clomped down the dark street, shuffling onto the snowy parkways when I hit a patch of unshoveled sidewalk.  Suddenly, ahead of me, under the pink streetlamp lights, I saw a dowager-humped old lady slip and fall on her side.  “Damn people who don’t shovel!” I thought.

I hurried up to her, just as she said, calmly and without any drama, “Will you help me up?”

“Of course.”  I grabbed her arm and lifted her to her feet.  Then I hung onto her arm and we waddled across the sidewalk and proceeded to walk down the middle of the street.  I insisted on taking her all the way to the door of the Baptist Church where she’d been heading when the sidewalk slicked and tricked her. 

She wasn’t a syrupy grateful old lady.  She hardly spoke as we trundled down the street, me clutching the arm of her faux fur.    I thought of how I hoped I wouldn’t end up in an icy place like Chicago when I was old, with nobody to help me get around.  My own grandmother, who’d been mugged on her way to St. Rita’s Church one morning, wouldn’t let that stop her from making it to daily Mass 365 days a year.  My friend’s aunt, who spied from her window across the street,  once spotted Grandma Falvey sneaking out for Mass with her four-pronged cane and a Band-Aid on her face.  

After I’d deposited the old woman at the doorstep, I hurried back down the street, my pity for the elderly woman vanishing and my admiration growing.  How much energy did it take her to go out?  And what guts she had.  Instead of wishing that I wouldn’t end up like her, I realized I’d be lucky if I did. How many days had I spent locked inside, turned off by the cold and ice? 

 I arrived at the warm bookstore and listened with delight to the stories by and about Grace Paley, a writer and activist who spent time in jail for protesting wars and the nuclear arms race.  Peace activist Kathy Kelly  (www.vitw.org) was there to speak about Paley’s commitment to social justice.  What a woman, with her head of long, gray, frizzy hair. Kelly’s strong and musical voice reminded me of a bridge humming with steel cables that could lead us all to heaven. 

And yet, the truth is that I’m a lazy activist.  I don’t do sit-ins in front of horses like Grace Paley; I’ve never spent time in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear sites like Kathy Kelly.  Amazing, stuff that!  All I do is help elderly women to their feet once in a while.  Why is the obvious fact that we need to mobilize against oppression something I shirk from?  Is it the cynicism of the post-babyboomer?  Self-absorption?  I’m just glad that Kathy Kelly is out there; that Angela West-Blank is out there; that Grace Paley is way way out there, looking down and saying, as she did to Rosellen Brown, “It’s all right.”

I hitched a ride home with Beth Snyder, who told me that my helping the old woman to her door was a mitzvah.  I suppose it was my answer to the firemen, who’d blessed me with their jimmy the day before.  Or maybe I just wanted another excuse to rail against the people who don’t shovel.

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